On our post a couple days ago, Caren from Cat Chat with Caren and Cody reminded us to cut the handles off of our paper shopping bags before playing in them. It was a great reminder, especially since we posted another photo yesterday of Newton going into a paper bag which also has handles.
That’s actually not how we normally get paper bags at all, but we were supervised the brief time we were allowed into those bags to have our photos taken. If we have paper bags left out to play in, the handles are always removed first.
It’s not so unusual a danger for a cat to get a head caught in the handle of a paper bag. We remember it happening to Star from the Celestial Kitties earlier this year, and to one of the foster kittens at Riverfront Cats last year. Have there been more blog entries about this that we forgot? Probably so. Catnip does that to the long-term memory.
And once upon a time, we had a shopping bag incident, too. The head peep woke up to find one of the cats who came before, Louie, in bed with a big paper bag attached to him. He had gotten his head stuck in a handle and dragged it all the way across the house in the darkness in search of help!
So please, if you’re going to let kitties play in paper bags, cut the handles off. We’re going to leave the bag in such rough condition that you aren’t going to want to go shopping with it afterwards anyhow!
